Editor's Note: July/August 2006

Not Quite a Cake Walk... but close

Watching a track meet last weekend, I heard the announcement, "Last call, boys 3200 meter run," and felt the ball that had been bouncing around my chest in the excitement of the meet drop into the pit of my stomach in anticipation of coming pain. It’s been 25 years since I was toeing the line in high school, but from the beginning I learned that racing hurts. That fact hasn’t changed, be it the intense, gasping pain of races under 5K to the dead-legged, I-just-want-to-lie-down-in-the-ditch-and-take-a-nap pain of the final miles of the marathon—every race distance hurts. With one exception: the half marathon.

I’m not saying that it is a cake walk to run 13.1 miles at the edge of your aerobic threshold: it requires intense focus, it gets long and you get tired. But, unlike shorter or longer races, you aren’t guaranteed agony. In fact, when you are well prepared, and it goes right, it is really, really fun. I vividly remember my first experience at the half, the 1993 Philadelphia Distance Run. I had been training with a club in New York, and ran the race with a friend who set the pace. I was shocked when we passed 10K just seconds slower than my best at that distance. Yet I felt great. The miles clicked by, each as fast as I felt I could run, but I kept doing them, gaining confidence as those remaining became fewer and fewer. After sprinting down the Ben Franklin Parkway to the finish, my endorphin-and-success-fueled grin lasted for days.

Thinking back, I can still feel the amazement that I could run that fast for that long. That feeling has been repeated nearly every time I’ve raced the distance. No other race provides such a remarkable sense of fitness and speed—which helps explain why virtually every runner I’ve met considers the half his or her favorite distance. Physiologically, this is a distance we seem to have been designed to run.

And an increasing number of runners seem to think so. Linda Honikman of Running USA Information Services reports that the half marathon is the third most popular distance for new certified courses (up from fifth in 1998), and that in 2005, about 40 per cent of the largest new events were half marathons.

Yet the half marathon doesn’t get much respect. It’s the name’s fault. As Andrew Suozzo says in his new book, The Chicago Marathon, "Defined not of and in itself but only in relationship to the marathon, [the half marathon] is relegated to a subordinate status; it ‘borrows’ another race’s name to define itself." While the marathon has a mystique as the "ultimate" distance race, the half feels like you went to Everest and stopped at Camp 2.

The marathon, however, can only be run during those times in your life when you can dedicate six to nine months to one grand obsession; anything less disrespects the distance and guarantees that the event will be a survival slog rather than a race. The half marathon, in contrast, can be enjoyed more often, by more people, for more years. It can be run well even when family, work or injury limit your commitment to less than 100 per cent, or it can take all you can give in the quest to run it fast. It deserves its own place in the running taxonomy.

This year, for the first time, we’re proud to present a guide exclusively dedicated to half marathons in the coming year, along with a plan for training for the distance. We’re also pleased to highlight the best 5 and 10K runner in the world today in our cover story on Tirunesh Dibaba, and to catch up with Adam Goucher since his comeback to the top of U.S. distance running. I hope their stories inspire you as you train this summer, whatever your preferred distance.